Just wanted to give a quick thank you to all my reviewers.

THANK YOU!

Now, onto the next part.

Chapter 8

The reincarnated engineer sprinted down the temporally empty corridors while his mind was raced as fast as his legs. With each quick step he took, a new plan was born in his brilliant mind. With the following step, that plan was quickly shot down. Run away-no, my friends...Get Rommie back up and working-no, don't have the time...Get the AI back up-no, again, no time...Gas the whole ship-no, would hurt the others. Plans came up, plans shot down, again and again till finally only one plan was left standing. Kill them all and get his friends back. The how in the plan was still to be figured out. Now with each rushed step the how was slowly being answered. Bombs, weapons, more bombs, more weapons, and one special bomb. The exhausted engineer now knew where his weak shaking legs had to take him... Machine Shop 17. Everything he needed was there, well almost everything.

Harper rounded the last corner to his destination. He saw the doors to the shop just a few yards away. A memory flashed through his tired mind. Earth, that fateful night, the Pytho's, that shot. He could even hear the chilling voice, "Well, well. Look what we have here boys." A cold wave of pure fear crawled up his spine. Focus Seamus, he commanded his mind. Mentally he pushed back the memories, the image of the unreachable sewer opening slowly morphed back into the door for the machine shop. He was fully back in the present by the time he heard the hiss of the door opening.

Quickly, he punched codes into the control panel to secure the doors. Not even Andromeda herself could access this room right now. A sigh escaped his lips as he leaned his back up against the cold closed doors. Safety...temporary safety, but he would take anything right now. With each deep breath he took, the past 26 hours filtered through his system. As the minutes pasted, his body's normal needs made themselves known. He raced off to the bathroom. A few minutes later he came out and grabbed a Sparky and 2 power bars from his secret stash. A minute later all three items were well on their way to his stomach. Then the last physical need was making it's self known. Sleep. His eyelids felt like a large group of Tyrs were pulling them shut. He was now seriously regretting that the day before all this happened he had skipped sleep to start work on the sensors. Regrettably, the immediate future held no time for a nap power, let alone a long rest.

Sparkies were strong, but not strong enough to keep him up till all the Pytho's were good and dead, he had his friends back, and Andromeda was back on-line. One disturbing option kept popping up in Harper's mind. He paced the cluttered room while contemplating his dilemma. His one option would keep him up, but it also had some serious drawbacks. Possibly deadly drawbacks. His one options was to take a strong Earth drug called Buzz.

His fatigued mind remembered the drug. One dose of Buzz would keep a person going for four days without sleep or food. It wasn't addictive and the user's thoughts were extra clear and extra paranoid. The latter was a very good thing to be during a Magog or Drago-Kazov raid, which was when the drug was used the most. A person could take Buzz and be able to run, hide and fight for 4 days non-stop. No Magog would kill them when they passed out from exhaustion because they never passed out. This was the reason why Harper had taken it twice before. Unfortunately Buzz had two major drawbacks which caused many people not to take it. First, it was rare and thus expensive. Harper had managed to acquire a small supply through selling his body to a human brothel for a month. The thought of that month brought back more memories that he never wanted to revisit again. The second reason most sane people never used Buzz was because of what happened when one came off of the powerful drug. Convulsions, vomiting, massive delusions and paranoia, high fevers, possible heart attack or stroke, the list went on and on. For 24 hours the user would experience these horrors. After that time, sleep, sweet sleep. When you did finally wake up, hours to days later, you would feel like you got hit by a large starship. That was if you woke up at all. Comas and death were not uncommon in Buzz users. The longer you were on it, the more doses you took, the more likely those two outcomes were.

Harper reluctantly remembered the two time he used it. Once, for a Drago raid when he was a teen in order to protect a younger very sick cousin. Seamus made sure any Drago that came near their hideout during the three day raid died. Unfortunately his cousin also died on the last night of the raid from the illness. The irony was not lost on young Seamus. The second time was a Magog raid a year later when he was living alone. That time he ran and hid during the four day raid. Both times, at the end of the fourth day, the young man went off to a remote ventilation shaft or sewer pipe. He crawled into the cramped space and withstood the withdrawal alone. His mind remembered the agony of those 24 hour periods and he really didn't want to go through it again. He blinked and as his eyelids would not reopen willingly, he had his answer.

Hesitantly, he walked over to one of the panels on the far wall. He pulled the metal panel off to reveal a small dirty leather bag. His past, his life. A shaky right hand reached in and took the bag from it's resting place. Harper made his way over to his bed, placed the guns he had taken from Pytho's and Trance on the bed and sat down. As soon as his body hit the soft mattress, a wave of exhaustion swept over his aching body. Unwillingly, he opened the bag releasing his past.

Sticking out most prominently was his tin whistle he had just recently gotten back from Brendan....Brendan. Being both physically and emotionally exhausted made Harper extra vulnerable to his normally concealed emotions. Tears formed behind his eyes as he remembered his last family member and how he had abandoned him, left him for dead. Harper pushed the whistle and the memories aside. Looking back in the bag, he saw that gadgets mostly filled the pouch. A communication device he had made for one of their little stupid play raids on the Dragos' compounds, one of the first shrillers he had made, and a few other random inventions. He took the shriller out of the bag and placed it on the bed. Next to the communication device laid his knife. The knife he used to kill countless attacking Dragos and a few Magog. You could attack Dragos, but Magog you ran from. That knife was also used to kill Siobhan and Declan. He was the unlucky one elected to kill his cousins because he was the only family member that was well enough to do it. The others were either injured badly in the raid or were very ill and bed ridden. He used that knife to slit their throats. Memories of the blood dripping off the knife filled his mind. Again, he pushed down the memories. Grabbing the knife by the cold hard handle, he placed it on the bed next to the shriller. Underneath the knife was a small silver locket. A family heirloom. It had been passed down from his Great-Great-Great Grandmother. His mom gave it to him after the last of his siblings had died. She wanted to make sure it got passed on and by giving it to her last surviving child she felt like it would protect him, keep him alive, so he could pass it on. He pushed the small precious memory aside. Finally, there, at the bottom of the bag was what he was searching for. A small plastic bag that held three small green pills. Buzz.

Harper managed to open the plastic bag with his one good hand and dumped the contents on the bed. Hesitantly he picked up one of the powerful pills. He examined the pill with reluctant eyes. "For the others," he whispered as he placed the pill under his tongue. As it dissolved, a tingling sensation flowed through his tongue and then through his body. A minute later, his eyelids were light, his mind was sharp, and his hands were twitchy. It was working. He placed the two remaining pills back in the bag and shoved it in one of his pant's pockets.

The now re-energized Harper jumped up from his bed, put the bag back in the wall, put the panel back on the wall and skipped over to his work table. Bombs, weapons and bombs. The image of Pythos blowing up filled Harper's mind as a smile filled his face. Sitting down on his stool, a realization hit him. How was he going to build anything with one working arm? Gently, his right hand lifted his left hanging arm and placed it on the table. He commanded his arm to move, which it didn't. Then he tried for a smaller goal and ordered his fingers to move, which they did. He didn't have full range of motion but he could work with it. Quickly he got to building. His good hand flew over bits of machinery, wires and circuit boards while his bad hand mostly held objects in place. Two hours later the cluttered table was clear, but surrounding Harper were bombs of every shape and size, as well as a few other random gadgets.

The genius pushed himself off of his stool and walked over to one of the more cluttered corners. He pushed a few layers of junk and clothes aside to reveal a courier bag, the type you place across a shoulder and chest. He dumped out the contents of the yellow and black bag. The last time he used it was on an away mission a few months back. He never had the time to unpack. What could he say, he was a busy and lazy guy.

Taking the bag, he headed over to the worktable. Carefully, he placed each bomb and gadget in the it. One special bomb he placed in a side pocket. That one was not finished yet and had a very special purpose. He then went over to his bed and picked up the shriller and the knife. He placed the knife in his boot and placed the chain attached to the shriller around his neck. He winched when the cold metal chain brushed up against his damaged data port. Damn it hurt. He grabbed the guns, stuffing one in his pants, and the other two in his bag. Harper swung the bag across his right shoulder and chest making sure he had quick access with is good arm. With his bomb-laden bag, he marched towards the door. Seamus Harper was now armed, Buzzed and ready to kill.

TBC...